CHITRAL: The local leaders of the ruling PTI have demanded of the government to take notice of land grabbing in Kagh Lusht area in Upper Chitral.

The PTI leaders including Minhajuddin, Aftab M Tahir and Advocate Ghulam Mustafa alleged that an influential family of Gilgit-Baltistan usurped 850 acres of land with the connivance of district administration.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday,

they alleged that the family grabbed a large piece of land in Kagh Lusht near Booni, the district headquarters of Upper Chitral, on the basis of fake documents.

They said that the documents regarding the ownership of the piece of land were not verified by the Achieves Library of the provincial government in Peshawar on the basis of which they took possession of the land from the former settlement officer, whose tenure spanned over nine years incessantly.

Showing the documents to journalists, the PTI leaders said that the occupants of the land recently tried to produce another letter of 1920s to establish their ownership but it also proved forged as its original copy was not available in the records of judicial council of Chitral.

They said that after their documents proved fake, the two land grabbers -- an uncle and his nephew -- filed civil case against each other in the local court, taking advantage of the indifference of the district administration and the success of any party would prove their ownership.

They said that instead of initiating criminal cases against the land grabbers for forgery and tampering with documents and dispossessing them of the illegally occupied land, the district administration was still a silent spectator.

The PTI leader said that a housing scheme was being established by the land grabbers and its plots were being sold to the gullible and innocent people of Chitral at higher rates while a shopping plaza on Chitral-Booni road was about to complete.

They demanded eviction of the land grabbers and initiation of criminal cases against them.

They said that local people would take to streets if their demands were not met.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2019